French vintner in N.S. testing market for sweet Sauterne

The summer visiting and tasting season at Nova Scotia wineries is in full swing, but with his refined European manners and dark suit, Philippe de Lur Saluces stood out from the other tipplers at Domaine de Grand Pre on Tuesday.

The wines his family produces at Chateau DeFargues in the Sauterne region of France are sold in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Newfoundland, and soon, he hopes, in Nova Scotia.

“Sauterne is a peculiar wine. … We have a small production (and) we do between 15 and 20 thousand bottles per year, so it is very hard to be everywhere, even more hard when you sell your wines the Bordeaux way,” Saluces said at lunch.

“The way we work in Bordeaux is that the job of the chateau is to produce the best wine we can. Once that is done, we have an (agent) who purchases our wine and sells it everywhere. So my job should not be to sell the wine; it should just be to make the wine, then it is sold elsewhere and I shouldn’t be aware of it. So it is hard for me to understand where my wine is going because the last thing the (agent) wants is for me to know who his clients are because he’s afraid of me as a potential competitor.”

“I am here because Canada is a traditional market for us that we want to reinforce.”

At Grand Pre, Saluces was the first person to taste the winery’s new Riesling icewine, along with another icewine, ice cider and several still wines. At a private tasting a short drive away at Benjamin Bridge, he tried two more icewines. Sauternes don’t parallel icewines, though they are sweet, but Saluces is trying to learn about the Nova Scotia market. He met with the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation during his day and a half in the province.

“I wanted to … try to assess with the liquor corporation whether this is the right time to start selling Chateau DeFargues in this market,” he said. “Sweet white wines are not the first wine you think of when you buy wines, so we know we have to target a certain type of clientele, wine lovers who are prepared to spend. It’s not a wine that is targeted to every market.”

At Benjamin Bridge, wine consultant Peter Gamble told Saluce that he also works for wineries in Ontario and British Columbia, but is absolutely sure that the best icewine is made in Nova Scotia, though Benjamin Bridge’s production is limited.

“We do icewine only rarely, when we feel the year is really exceptional for it,” said Gamble, who has Sauternes produced by Saluce’s chateau in his personal wine cellar.

Saluce was hosted during his visit by Bordeaux enthusiast David King of Halifax, who hopes to help educate wine lovers in the versatility of sweet wines.

“In general, I think people misunderstand sweet wines,” said King.

“If you look at a menu, you’ll see that sweet wines are recommended for desserts, and I think that’s not a good way to appreciate these wines. There’s what I call a pseudo-affectation among young wine drinkers; they believe dry is good and sweet is poor, largely because they were exposed to low-quality sweet wines on this continent, whereas people that understand wine know that sweet wines are phenomenal because of the complexity that they offer and the unique flavours that you don’t get from anything else.